M&T Hosts Exhibition of Photography from the Burchfield-Penney Art Center Collection
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is pleased to announce the opening of Photographic Progress: Pictorialsim to Post-Modernism at the M&T Center in downtown Buffalo from November 5, 2003 through May 5, 2004. With support from M&T Bank for its ongoing series of exhibitions, the Burchfield-Penney Art Center presents examples from its photography collection, a collection which represents the emergence of photography from the realm of science to the world of art.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, photographers strove to make photography acceptable to the art world. Photo-Pictorialists championed the right of the photographer to manipulate the image, often using whatever methods were necessary to achieve a soft focus previously associated with nineteenth-century Impressionist painting. For example, Clara E. Sipprell photographed people using only natural light. Harold L. Olmsted, a Buffalo artist and landscape architect, is just one of her subjects among internationally recognized artists, writers, scientists and heads of state. John L. Garretson and Wilbur H. Porterfield were more drawn to landscape photography.
Later twentieth-century photographers took the opposite approach, capitalizing on the cameras ability to capture minute detail with extreme accuracy. Many utilized compositional concepts based on painting and drawing to produce allegorical landscapes, portraits, figurative and still-life subjects. Jim Wallace has photographed remarkable landscapes all over the globe, capturing exquisite textures and colors. Social documentary photographers act as historians interested in preserving moments in time, events, and people in their daily lives. Some hold noble aspirations for motivating political and cultural change with critical works that pointed to gritty reality rather than aesthetically pleasing images. Milton Rogovin has photographed miners and factory workers at work and at home in the United States and abroad. He and David Gordon have both documented ministers and congregations in African-American churches in Buffalo.
Today photography is not only considered fine art, but it has been adopted by post-modernist and conceptual artists who deconstruct or invent images. The truth that photography had seemed to represent has been called into question, particularly with the technology that allows for both darkroom and digital manipulation of images seamlessly and convincingly, thereby creating an alternate reality or fictional truth. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ellen Carey produced manipulated self-portraits as statements on identity. More recently she has been concerned with the process of color photography, creating images of pure saturated color and light. Michael Bosworth built sets and models to create his tableaus. Working similarly with constructed elements, John Opera used pinhole photography to achieve the results of his oneiric image in one of the museums most recent acquisitions.
Free public tours of the exhibition take place on most Tuesdays at noon. Call (716) 878-6020 to confirm. The M&T Center building is open to the public.
M&T Bank has hosted and provided financial support for exhibitions on-site at M&T Center presented by the Burchfield-Penney Art Center since 1988.
About the Burchfield-Penney Art Center
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is a museum dedicated to the art and vision of Charles E. Burchfield and distinguished artists of Buffalo Niagara and Western New York State. Through its affiliation with Buffalo State College, the museum encourages learning and celebrates our richly creative and diverse community. For more information, call (716) 878-6011 or visit www.burchfield-penney.org.
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is supported in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and County of Erie. Additional operating support is provided by the Elizabeth Elser Doolittle Trust, the Mary A. H. Rumsey Foundation and the Burchfield-Penneys members. Support for Photographic Progress: Pictorialsim to Post-Modernist at M&T Center from November 5, 2003 May 5, 2004, was provided by M&T Bank.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, photographers strove to make photography acceptable to the art world. Photo-Pictorialists championed the right of the photographer to manipulate the image, often using whatever methods were necessary to achieve a soft focus previously associated with nineteenth-century Impressionist painting. For example, Clara E. Sipprell photographed people using only natural light. Harold L. Olmsted, a Buffalo artist and landscape architect, is just one of her subjects among internationally recognized artists, writers, scientists and heads of state. John L. Garretson and Wilbur H. Porterfield were more drawn to landscape photography.
Later twentieth-century photographers took the opposite approach, capitalizing on the cameras ability to capture minute detail with extreme accuracy. Many utilized compositional concepts based on painting and drawing to produce allegorical landscapes, portraits, figurative and still-life subjects. Jim Wallace has photographed remarkable landscapes all over the globe, capturing exquisite textures and colors. Social documentary photographers act as historians interested in preserving moments in time, events, and people in their daily lives. Some hold noble aspirations for motivating political and cultural change with critical works that pointed to gritty reality rather than aesthetically pleasing images. Milton Rogovin has photographed miners and factory workers at work and at home in the United States and abroad. He and David Gordon have both documented ministers and congregations in African-American churches in Buffalo.
Today photography is not only considered fine art, but it has been adopted by post-modernist and conceptual artists who deconstruct or invent images. The truth that photography had seemed to represent has been called into question, particularly with the technology that allows for both darkroom and digital manipulation of images seamlessly and convincingly, thereby creating an alternate reality or fictional truth. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ellen Carey produced manipulated self-portraits as statements on identity. More recently she has been concerned with the process of color photography, creating images of pure saturated color and light. Michael Bosworth built sets and models to create his tableaus. Working similarly with constructed elements, John Opera used pinhole photography to achieve the results of his oneiric image in one of the museums most recent acquisitions.
Free public tours of the exhibition take place on most Tuesdays at noon. Call (716) 878-6020 to confirm. The M&T Center building is open to the public.
M&T Bank has hosted and provided financial support for exhibitions on-site at M&T Center presented by the Burchfield-Penney Art Center since 1988.
About the Burchfield-Penney Art Center
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is a museum dedicated to the art and vision of Charles E. Burchfield and distinguished artists of Buffalo Niagara and Western New York State. Through its affiliation with Buffalo State College, the museum encourages learning and celebrates our richly creative and diverse community. For more information, call (716) 878-6011 or visit www.burchfield-penney.org.
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is supported in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and County of Erie. Additional operating support is provided by the Elizabeth Elser Doolittle Trust, the Mary A. H. Rumsey Foundation and the Burchfield-Penneys members. Support for Photographic Progress: Pictorialsim to Post-Modernist at M&T Center from November 5, 2003 May 5, 2004, was provided by M&T Bank.
Media Contact:
Kathleen Heyworth, Public Relations, Burchfield-Penney Art Center | 7168784529 | heyworkm@buffalostate.edu